Why vinyl might sound better

If you know what processing needs be done for producing a vinyl master, what limitations there are in cutting the lacquer and producing the stamper, you might wonder why there are so many vinyl fans. Let’s see if I can help you understanding this.

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[stuartmallett]

Hi Hans, just wanted to say thanks for your videos, please keep up the good work.

[johndavies]

Fascinating!! I had no idea how many different masters might be made for a single song now that music is consumed in so many different ways today. This really many you think about the process behind the product we are trying to listen to. Wow!

[henrygunawan]

Hans just want to say I am big fan of your channel! Learned really lots about Audio thru ur excellent and informative channels. Just want to add: I didn't grow up with vinyl.. I am only exposed to vinyl in the last 2-3 years of my life (almost 40 y.o. now) and that's what got me into 2 channel Audio. To me vinyl sounds more natural and life like sounding and now I realise its probably due to two things that you smartly pointed in the video: 1. The limitation of Vinyl dynamic range and physical limitations forces vinyl mastering to be BETTER than other medium. 2. The RIAA curve filtering is smoother compared to Digital Aliasing.

[sheepbaba]

I love my Vynolium. Some aspects are bad but the sense of 3d space and calmness it brings me is great. The ritual and talking point is important too. It was very interesting about the time smearing cause by steep filtering in CD's. I would like to know more about that.

[karabennemsi]

Hi,

Your point of view is very interesting. Personally I believe that our way of hearing is perfectly developed within its limits. So maybe we tend to prefer the sound of an imperfect vinyl record, because it's more compatible with the signal process in our ears and brains.

[ProjectOverseer]

Excellent topic and presentation, Hans.
Though I have a lot of very good to high end digital recording and playback equipment, I keep a pretty good analogue setup too - which includes Vinyl.
As with digital, 3 things are essential for audiophile quality playback with vinyl records. 1. The recording 2. The pressing and 3. The quality of your playback setup (I won't include the performance aspect)
Though state of the art digital is better (much) most have never heard what high end digital sounds like, as Its true to say most have not heard what high end vinyl can achieve. Technically digital will win every time, but our ears will tell us different sometimes if all key aspects of playback are correct.
Today, digital plays a big part in my recordings (PCM & DSD) and has safely reached a stage of superiority at the higher end.

[bshah]

I really like vinyl, especially records that were originally recorded as analogue. After buying an expensive ( for me) streamer (£1500) I now find when listening to Hi Res audio that I am content to listen to it actively as I do my record collection.

[pedrojmorais]

Very nice approach indeed.
Let me add a few things.
CD has two other problems:
One is dithering, a process to erase the intermodulation of clock 44.1khz with audio, means that the precise picking moment of each sample is randomly oscillated in order to erase the perfect clock of 44.1khz from interacting with the audio, this reduces harmonic spectrum noise, but gives an unnatural and tonal harmonic shyness to guitars and other complex harmonic natural sounds.
The other is dynamics VS resolution, the CD has more dynamics but the low level signals have very poor resolution (reduction of available bits for coding), and on very high quality systems this is very evident, (old vinyl pressings from 70's compared to the same on a lot of different CDs), the notion we get during listening, is that vinyl has more overall detail.
This small-scale fine detail combined with a fuller tonality in some instruments like acoustic guitars, give us a clear increase in pureness and naturalness of the analogue experience.

[edwinvp]

Interesting breakdown. One thing I don't understand is the time smearing you speak about. How does an A/D-converter introduce time smearing? I thought that only happens in digital filters where time discrete samples are converted into the frequency domain.

[KnightRiderKARR]

HighRes Audio (96KHz/24bit) is now best choice these days - there are some vinyls are copied from Digital Source (Maybe Audio CD or ADAT or Studios Recording at 44KHz/24bit) and after that the vinyl sounds little worse due from Digital Source.

[berryvo]

Eindelijk eens een genuanceerd verhaal over dit heikele onderwerp. Hoewel ik zelf het liefste compact discs afspeel snap ik best dat veel mensen vinyl prefereren. Voor mij is voornamelijk het oppervlaktegeluid de afknapper: als ik naar Mahlers eerste symfonie luister dan wil ik de muziek horen, niet de geluidsdrager.

[genuineuni]

Hans, you make some good points. Feel vinyl had far less dynamic range than audio CDs, so peaks were limited and the music was louder. Find some audiophile pressing from MFSL, and you'll notice the loudness in less than the commercial pressings, since they attempted to preserve the peaks. But, peaks are boring, since they add little to audio quality.But, let's talk vinyl LPs. Back then, they had to store analog music on magnetic recording tape, hopefully, not adding any tape hiss noise. Plus, man had little electronic tools to enhance audio back in the 60's+. Some record companies, like Capitol, made their own electronics to enhance sound. Add thermal noise of electronics and hopefully a clean mixing board to mix with to create a song. You can remove all those problematic areas, and remix analog recordings in a digital world, for the greatest dynamics.Some, like Bob Ludwig, complained about Loudness Wars. However, my review of vinyl 45s from decades back, tells me the Loudness Wars have always been a part of Pop music. As the song would fade, the fidelity improved. Back then, I didn't know why, but I do now. Bottom line, if the vinyl record sounds better than the audio CD, blame man, he's the culprit.

[justsoyouknow]

speaking of the experience, the single best is glowing tubes! in a dark room of course

[BirdArvid]

5:06 In defence of Deep Purple; right before someone shouts (as a joke) "can we have everything louder than everything else!" Gillan asks for "a bit more monitor if you've got it" Then you hear Ian Gillan make a loud sound, as if to check the level of his own voice in the monitor. So the comment to which you refer, is aimed at the sound tech, and what the band can hear in their monitors. I know you're kidding, but I must defend the boys in Deep Purple! Great video!

[TheJohnniegolden]

Are all tube amplifiers necessarily running in class A? And is class A power generally more robust, meaning you would need fewer watts in a class A amp to achieve the same result as in class AB or D?

[mlhm]

what kind of battery pack should you have to run the Rasberry Pi plus a hat amp like the HiFiBerry?

[guy]

Good video Hans, but im in disagreement with some comments.A well recorded, mastered CD will always sound better than LP.Just my opinion.

[stevemartin]

'Your ears are only part of your auditory system. Your brain plays an important and intelligent role ... there also might be secondary stimuli that can be associated with playing a record; like the turning of the record on the player, the unpacking of the record from the sleeve, and so on.'

Oooh … nice. And if anything, an understatement.

I am an applied linguist (35 years in Japanese and American universities) with an undergraduate degree in biology and post-grad readings in philosophy of science as well as linguistics. A Dutch compatriot of yours, the primatologist Frans de Waal is one of my contemporary inspirations.

But it does not take a professional linguist to note the ease with which the smooth flow of collaborative communication is compromised when visual cues are omitted from a communicative act … Otherwise this Youtube video would not be necessary. An mp3 file would do just as well.

Granted, music as art is not the exact same thing as conversation, but there is a large degree of communicative intent, and it is a collaborative act. The listener’s musical experience (social constructs) and many genetically influenced differences in psychological constructs such as ‘tolerance for ambiguity’ are brought into play when listening to music, otherwise there would be no qualitative difference between The Sex Pistols, a military marching band, and Harnoncourt playing The Brandenburg Concertos.

And of course, the difference between being at a live performance or even at a studio session … and privately hearing a reproduction of those performances, is worth an essay in itself. The psychological difference would be like night and day. I would sacrifice a year of my allotted lifespan to have had my nose pressed against the window of the recording studio when Miles Davis recorded ‘Kind of Blue’ ... or that magic moment when Astrud Gilberto was cleverly inserted into one song on an album that was was supposed to feature João Gilberto and Stan Getz ... or neck deep in a mudbath at Woodstock, listening to Jimi Hendrix. All potential life-changing experiences which, without imagination, even the latest and greatest home sound systems can give only a hint, much like the echoes and shadows playing against the wall in Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

The increasing polarization of politics is also a result of communication without visual cues … the ease with which democracies can be disrupted (or exposed) by anonymous purveyors of ‘alternative facts’ — easily just some lone hack trying to make an easy dollar … or a fifteen year old screaming for attention. Yet another essay for another time.

But back to the music.

I am thinking of recent and long overdue inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, British Prog Rock group, Yes.

Back in the day, I remember getting as big a thrill from just gazing at Roger Dean’s steam-punk art work gracing the covers of those early albums … particularly ‘Fragile’, ‘Relayer’, and ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’. I dare say, the communicative sound of Yes would not quite have had the same impact without the collaborative graphic talent of Roger Dean.

But having gone on to discover the pleasures of jazz, both in the emerging fusion / post-bop era, as well as its earlier progenitors, I can’t help but to associate the sounds of some great music with those classic, minimalist Blue Note album covers (several books have been made of those album covers alone), as well as that ECM label cover art … ethereal tone-poem landscapes, or even the somewhat dated Windham Hill label album covers. Don’t get much of that with even the best DAC.

As fundamental as the sense of sound is to what it means to be homo sapiens, a social primate, I think there is a good argument that sight may be even more fundamental … and has a largely unexplored impact on the subjective quality of our listening experience.

I am learning a lot of new things from you, Mr. Beekhuyzen, and based on my own professional experience in another domain, agree with your stressing the importance of the entire nervous system. Enough so, that with this comment, you have earned yourself another patron. Just call me #67 ;-)

Thank you sir!

[MrRAW]

Hans, is het mogelijk dat de industrie MQA zal gaan 'verkopen' door gebruik te maken van een betere masterfile en zo het kwaliteitsverschil groter zal maken tov normale red blok files? Als er al zo veel verschillende mixes gemaakt worden door één studio heb ik zo mijn bedenkingen. Of zorgt het MQA label voor de kwaliteitscontrole?

[MrMilanina]

What do you expect is needed for Digital to sound better than Vinyl?
Will that ever be possible given your statement about the filter which is used in the critical mid range in digital?